(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a component unit monitoring system for monitoring the status of a component unit, and more particularly to a component unit monitoring system for monitoring the status of a component unit using a wireless IC tag.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, a server computer holds component unit information and ancillary sensor information as initial information in a NVRAM (NonVolatile RAM) that is inherent to the server computer. When the component unit information is changed, the information stored in the NVRAM needs to be updated to reflect the change. Therefore, it has been tedious and time-consuming to manage the component unit information. For monitoring a sensor attached to a component unit of a server computer, it has been customary to employ a controller known as a BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) for centralized management. The user is naturally unable to access fault information of the sensor unless the server computer is turned on.
On some conventional computer systems, a sensor attached to a component unit is monitored using a BMC as follows: The BMC is connected to devices to be monitored (hereinafter referred to as component units) which are mounted on the computer system by a bus such as an SMBus (System Management Bus). Fault information produced by sensors is generally stored in a memory that is managed by the BMC. Because the fault information from the sensors is stored in the memory associated with the BMC, the user needs dedicated software to read the fault information from the memory. In addition, the user cannot read the stored fault information when the computer system is turned off.
The fault information of various component units is centrally managed by the single BMC. Accordingly, the user is unable to track down records of fault information of individual component units when they are removed from the computer system. For identifying a sensor associated with a component unit in an analysis of fault information managed by the MBC, the user has to acquire necessary information from the NVRAM inherent to the computer system. It has been tedious and time-consuming to manage VNRAM information generated for each of the component units.
Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 2004-078840 discloses a wireless tag and a telemetry system for writing a signal from a sensor into an EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM) in the wireless tag and sending sensor data on a reply frame to an inquiring machine. Although the wireless tag reads the signal from the sensor, sends the signal to the inquiring machine, and stores the signal, the wireless tag does not analyze the signal and does not store analytic results.
Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 2004-157715 discloses a method of generating a database for an electronic apparatus by acquiring component numbers which are assigned to respective components of the electric apparatus and serve as component identification data for identifying the components, from a data acquisition device, and storing the acquired component identification data in association with a manufacturer's serial number as apparatus identification data. According to the disclosed method, although component numbers are acquired and stored, status information of the component is not dynamically grasped.